Sounds Sooooooooooo Subjective...

[Malcolm Boyce]

So I'm listening to a collection of hits by Chicago from the '80s, mostly the David Foster produced, and I think Humberto Gatica recorded most of that stuff. I began thinking about the sounds on those records...

Forums are full of people asking how to get a "great" sound, or what's the "best" mic for this instrument or that.... but sounds are so about context. I love that snare sound those guys were going for on those albums, but aren't those sounds so different from most other sounds these days?

Another crazy discussion that I read was about what's the best Tube mic for around $1500... To me, that's like asking what's the best black mic for $1500. A much better question is, what are my best options for an all purpose condenser mic in the $1500 range?

Shouldn't we be talking more about the process, and less about the gear?

[weatherstation audio]

I agree... but unfortunately, I don't own any Chicago records

here's my rant on this art of science...

from time to time, I still buy CD's from the musicstore, you know, the old fashion way, and half the CD's I end up buying are from the classic era.... and about that tube thingy... I'll make a general assumption (I could be wrong) but I'm willing to bet, that the amount of tube gear that was involved to record those early Chicago albums was quite minimal... perhaps the occasional Pultec EQ or LA2a comp during the mixdown stage... but one thing that I find missing from today's records is that 'character'... I often hear modern records that have mixes Pro Tool'ed to death, and it's become an easy acccessible quest for perfection... today, perhaps we have a lack of good musicanship that was ever so apparent on older recordings, no problem, Pro Tools will fix that ?... it wasn't always easy to make a record/album in the old days... a lot of money was put on the line, and record companies hired experienced people they could trust to turn out the next big sound... and all those early recordings before the days of a zillion tracks/multitrack technology... people today would look at you sideways if you even entertain the thought of recording that way... you know, with instruments etc... bleeding into all the mics cause the band played off the floor in a big room to just a couple of tracks... another good point, recording in a nice big natural room... 'character'... alot of recordings today are made by tight/close micing techniques in smaller tight spaces with nothing but sonix on the walls to suck up that character... at a technical standpoint, 'Louie, Louie' is recorded quite horribly, but it was still a huge hit ? Now, let's talk about our fast-forward diet of today... what's missing from today's recording techonolgy, is it really tubes ? Well, sure, a well built piece of tube gear could sound nice... but it also needs to be supporterd by hefty expensive transformers... once upon a time, audio transformers in audio circuits was almost unavoidable in order to balance the audio circuit out, I can't really explain it, but good 'iron' can sound musical and exude some mojo character, very scientific stuff... even the power supplies for this gear had tubes (rectifiers) in the chain, some claim that this was also a noticeable part of the mojo sound... and what about the analog tape that almsot became extinct ?... iron oxide... today, we have pretty much cut out the iron from our recording diet...

anyways, this is not the gospel.. it's just my 2 cents worth

Marc

[weatherstation audio]

on that note.. I am now going to Munroe's to buy a new hard drive